Re: Hardiness of Species Irises

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Do we simply want a list of low temperatures each species has been
known to survive? If so, I suppose there need to be some standards
across the data, such as no snow cover in a fully-exposed location. On
the other hand, a list of locations where species have been grown
outdoors successfully might be more useful since you can then take
into account climate conditions other than temperature when deciding
to try a species. It might be something to try to integrate into the
species database.

Other thoughts on cold hardiness:
•cold tolerance is sometimes dramatically decreased in regions with
too few sunny days during the growing season compared to a plant's
native range
•some species enjoy being sumberged in water during the growing season
but can't tolerate being frozen in it (I'd like to see a list of
species that can take being completely frozen in a pond)
•many if not most iris species are hardier than you might expect based
on their native ranges

Sean Z
SE Michigan
Zone 5b/6a